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1948 and After: Israel and the Palestinians (Clarendon Paperbacks)

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1948 and After is an addendum to Morris' famous The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem. Written a few years after that work, here Morris broadens that first historical inquiry, providing a response to his critics in the first essay, "The New Historiography: Israel and its Past," a cogent treatment of the trajectory of the writing of the State of Israel's history. Then Morris provides a series of essays on the Israeli Defense Forces Intelligence Analysis of the Arab Exodus, Yosef Weitz and the Transfer Committees, the flight of Haifa's Arabs, the harvest of Arab crops in 1948, the case of four Arab communities which were not deported/fled during the 1948 conflict, and particularly fascinating, an essay on the initial absorption of Palestinian refugees in Arab host countries; the work ends with an essay on the transfer of Al Majad's Arabs to Gaza in 1950. Like all of Morris' work, 1948 and After is well researched, documented, clearly written, and nuanced. For those who wish to write rigorous and fair history, Morris' work is a great model.

This book, a series of somewhat related essays on the subject, has neither the impact nor the focus of the original work. It is a good book, however, and it fills in some interesting details.